Bumping back

OK y’all so I have genuine questions, I am reading things about the young Black man Joseph Kent on social media. I get it social justice warriors, we are on high alert for injustice yeah! But Joseph Kent was engaging in a form of civil rights strategy that has been practiced for a long time. Let’s call it civil disobedience. It’s the same thing that folks did during the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The government says, “we are going to enforce and or create a rule at this time, if you don’t comply with this law, you will be arrested.” The person/group that disagrees with this law and thinks that authorities are overstepping and or feel that defying this law will draw attention to a larger issue, decide to defy this law and recognize that the consequences for defying will be arrest. There are possibly far worse consequences depending on a variety of circumstances, including but not limited to: identity, political system, country of protest/origin, etc…

Joseph Kent knew he was breaking the curfew and I imagine he felt justified in protesting this curfew and did it for many reasons, but now we on the other end of the camera watching. Did his arrest look like a kidnapping from a movie on terrorism, yes. But at the end of the day is this where I think we should be focusing our social media capital (and yes I recognize the “pot calling the kettle black” moment that I am having with this post)? I don’t know, there are a lot of things in the world that are frustrating and difficult to watch: children getting kidnapped and sold, civil wars around the world, African migrants dying in the Mediterranean, starving people, a planet being destroyed, disparities between the rich and the poor becoming greater by the minute, extreme poverty, lack of access to basic health care, an earthquake in Nepal (we haven’t seen the worst of that disaster yet), Black folks running away from the police and being shot in the back, a man who’s back is broken and we have no idea why or how that happened and then caused him to die…. The list is long. I feel the need to reserve my anger and social media capital for these moments. This does not mean that I wish harm on those that step into these dangerous situations and stand up for liberty in the best way they know how. I hope that our Republic does shows their best by arresting this man without beating him up or breaking his back or killing him when he is clearly not exhibiting a threat to the police in riot gear. But, I think he should be arrested and I can’t get mad at that.

During the civil rights movement when Black folks knowingly defied laws, the point was to get arrested and draw national attention to the cause. Miranda rights, etc… during a “state of emergency” in front of CNN cameras before you grab a protester may be a lot to ask… And I would love to hear from folks if you think that my thinking here is off because I genuinely want to understand the other side of this argument. I guess what I am trying to say is Joseph Kent was engaging in an act of civil disobedience to further a conversation about what is happening in his community. So why are we talking about Joseph Kent and not the difficult task that lies before us. Communities being rendered voiceless by systems of oppression that have rendered them invisible and victims of violence to the extreme. And even worse that than, these incidents of violence often go unanswered and the perpetrators of this violence are allowed to live without consequence (now I think that if you take someone’s life whether you are convicted or not, you will face consequences for these actions, but that is my spiritual side talking). This is the conversation we need to have about Black folks feeling like they have been pushed to the edge and they can’t take it anymore, so they are fighting back.

Anyone else feeling a Ralph Ellison moment coming on? I do:

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me…When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me…That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality… It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves…you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren’t simply a phantom in other people’s minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you.”

So why do people Riot? Remember Ralph, they’re bumping back. Notice for Black folks that riot: stop tearing up the community. This morning on NPR there was actually an interview of a teenage boy who was a rioter on Monday and on Tuesday he was cleaning up his neighborhood because he realized how ineffectual it was to do so–but you probably didn’t hear that in a number of conversations about these riots. I live in a predominantly Black community and I grew up in a predominantly Black community, raised by a protesting hippy Black person and here’s what I know about Riots. Why are we burning up where we live? Almost all spiritual practices inform us that there is a deep connection between how one sees their community/environment and how one sees themselves. To be connected to environment and this communities where we live means that we are less likely to liter…most of us wouldn’t just drop trash on the floor in our house, but feel very comfortable dropping it on the street outside a building. If one feels ok to litter, it isn’t a far leap from that to throwing a garbage can through the window of a local business. The person littering does not see a connection between themselves, their well-being and the environment around them. As folks in Baltimore continue to work as a community to clean up their community my prayer is that it goes beyond the riot clean up. Maybe we all can gather our neighbors and take a walk down the block to pick up the trash around us to feel more connected to our streets. Maybe we all can be those annoying old Black women who yell at us when we are doing something wrong and set us back on the right path (maybe we can sound a little less miserable when doing it).If you know community organizations or groups that are already doing this work (I hate when we reinvent the wheel), shout them out so folks can sign up.

How can we help folks see themselves as integrally connected to their immediate environment?

If we can’t solve that then so many of the issues I listed above will continue to devastate communities that are already at the margins of society.

We should care that Joseph Kent got arrested, we should care that Black folks were rioting and destroying their own community, but we should also care that there were even more folks coming out to clean-up and rebuild and stop the violence as it erupted and we should care even more about why these riots were happening in the first place.